I enjoyed this interview. One growing use case for assets on blockchains is the tokenization of scarce digital assets in video game economies. This use case makes game items into digital bearer assets. World of Warcraft gold was an early example of this concept but blockchains are enabling the concept to grow even further. Digital game items and currencies potentially have value if game curators can manage supply effectively and there is sufficient demand for scarce game items/currencies from users. This has already started with in-game item purchases for games such as Fortnite. The next frontier to monetize in-game item purchases is to tokenize game items that can be used with third-party platforms. This is happening in an inefficient manner today with the CS:GO game skin gambling economy. I know it sounds wild but a google search will show this use case is potentially worth billions of dollars.
Ripple – Ripple was launched by OpenCoin, a company founded by technology entrepreneur Chris Larsen in 2012. Like Bitcoin, Ripple is both a currency and a payment system. The currency component is XRP, which has a mathematical foundation like Bitcoin. The payment mechanism enables the transfer of funds in any currency to another user on the Ripple network within seconds, in contrast to Bitcoin transactions, which can take as long as 10 minutes to confirm.
When buying altcoins, I always keep an eye on Bitcoin’s value, and over time I’ve made some important observations with regard to this. There are almost never three green days in row, and when the market is in the red, Bitcoin tends to decline less then altcoins. Once this happens, your order will be filled and you’ll get your 3% discount, since the altcoin tends to drop harder than Bitcoin.
Golem is built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. Golem is a project run by the group of Polish programmers. It is on track to becoming the world’s most powerful decentralised supercomputer. This supercomputer will process anything from scientific research in academia through to rendering the latest block buster movies, and once complete users will have supercomputer processing power at their fingertips.
Tom is a cryptocurrency expert and investor from Edinburgh, United Kingdom, with over 5 years of experience in the field. He holds an MA in diplomacy and BA in politics from the University of Nottingham, giving him a firm understanding of the social implications and political factors in cryptocurrency. He believes in long-term projects rather than any short term gains, and is a strong advocate of the future application of blockchain technology. Contact Tom: [email protected]
What makes Sia so great is that anyone can participate and get paid for leasing their spare storage space. This is something many of us have with the price of hard drives being so low. When a host and an uploader connect a contract is formed. This contract is called a ‘smart contract’. It allows the renter to receive payments in exchange for their storage space being used.

Here’s what’s Lisk all about: Most developers today rely on centralized giants, such as Google Play and the AppStore to put up their newly developed apps. These giants take much of the profits and attention from these apps, and Lisk believes all this should be going to the developers themselves. This is where its Javascript-based tech comes in. Lisk is incredibly exciting because it aims to offer a decentralized apps platform, one that actually favors the developers, and therefore gives them the bigger piece of the cake. Lisk was previously Crypti, and after proving itself on a community level, it was forked by Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows into Lisk, in 2016.

Before going all in on ICOs, investors must understand that investing in Cryptocurrencies is an extremely high-risk endeavour. ICOs have a particularly higher risk profile as most of them are only at the conceptualization stage; they often do not have a working protocol/product and hence, there’s minimal indication that it is going to be a success or even viable in the long-term. Therefore, it is vital that thorough due diligence is undertaken.
I’m not saying that HODLing won’t make you great returns in the long run – in fact, I firmly believe it will. However, by taking profits when an asset’s price is high and buying again when it’s low, your HODL position only becomes worth more and more. That being said (and assuming you bought in absolutely convinced of the long-term perspective of your holdings), never sell all your holdings when taking profits.

In the case of a watermelon, what we intuitively grasp is that there is some fundamental, intrinsic value to the watermelon, and a ‘fair’ price for it. We have a general understanding of what this price should be, and are more than happy to buy watermelons when they are on discount relative to their fair price, and are reticent to do so when they are being sold at a premium to their fair price.

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If you are serious about cryptocurrency trading, I strongly recommend finding a mastermind group that suits your skill level and budget so that you can improve your knowledge, expose yourself to less risk, and gain access to news and tips before they hit the mainstream market – this is where the real money is to be made. In my opinion, your best bet is to sign up to use the Notorious Bot as you get a ton of value not only from the bot but also from the Discord channel where you have access to veteran traders and analysts.
When a market is as volatile and unpredictable as this one, diversification is what ensures gains while limiting risk. Additionally, unlike most other markets, the cryptocurrency market tends to act as one cohesive unit, meaning that diversification does not threaten profits as it would in other markets. Rather, it ensures that one singular cryptocurrency’s drop in value will not have a large effect on your portfolio.

While the number of merchants who accept cryptocurrencies has steadily increased, they are still very much in the minority. For cryptocurrencies to become more widely used, they have to first gain widespread acceptance among consumers. However, their relative complexity compared to conventional currencies will likely deter most people, except for the technologically adept.

Beyond that, for most people, the best (i.e. simplest) way to invest in bitcoin starts with setting up a cryptocurrency wallet. Some of the better-known sites where you can do this are Coinbase, Bitstamp and Bitfinex, although there are a number of other platforms out there, as well. Once you establish an account, connect it to your payment source — a bank account or a credit or debit card — via two-factor authentication. Of note: It’s important to use a tool like Google Authenticator rather than just relying on text-based authentication, which can be more vulnerable to cybertheft, when investing in bitcoin.
The difficulty is knowing when the trend has changed, as such, I hedge altcoins and BTC against each other and make changes in my portfolio when a change in the trend becomes more obvious. When BTC dominance is falling, altcoins tend to perform better and vice versa, but this is not always the case, when they rise together, my gut instinct tells me that significant volumes of new capital are entering the market.

If you have a brokerage account, you can expect the bitcoin user experience to be similar. And, as with a brokerage account, you’re likely to pay transaction fees whenever you buy or sell. That means day-trading bitcoin probably isn’t a great strategy — since those transaction fees could quickly eat up any profits. If you’re using bitcoin instead of PayPal, Venmo, etc., check first to see if the seller will charge you a fee for paying in bitcoin.

Bitcoin trading occurs on exchanges. These exchanges accept your fiat currencies (like USD and EUR) in exchange for a cryptocurrency (like BTC). These exchanges maintain a liquid pool of bitcoin, allowing users to withdraw their bitcoin at any time. Investors who wish to trade on that exchange can deposit bitcoin into their personal wallet on the exchange, or make a wire transfer to the exchange’s bank account. The exchange notices this transfer, then credits your account.
Before going all in on ICOs, investors must understand that investing in Cryptocurrencies is an extremely high-risk endeavour. ICOs have a particularly higher risk profile as most of them are only at the conceptualization stage; they often do not have a working protocol/product and hence, there’s minimal indication that it is going to be a success or even viable in the long-term. Therefore, it is vital that thorough due diligence is undertaken.
WAX (World Asset Exchange) is an emerging project with a bright future. Developed by the founders of OPSkins, the leading marketplace for virtual video game assets. The WAX team has built the first decentralized exchange for gamers to trade digital-assets for nominal fees on a trusted platform. There’s a massive market for this platform considering there are over 400 million gamers who purchase more than $50B in digital goods every year. WAX is one of the few emerging projects with a built-in use case and existing user base which already has experience using cryptocurrencies to purchase digital assets.
Ultimately, if you want to make money with crypto you have a couple of options. The easiest thing to do is to build a diversified portfolio of carefully selected coins and then to simply wait a couple of years. However, this is not the most effective way to make mad money. If you want to truly crush it at crypto, you need access to truly knowledgable people.

This type of cryptocurrency is on the rise. In this model, a cryptocurrency represents the value of an underlying asset such as gold, art, fiat currencies, etc. It represents a new, more accessible way to invest in assets other than cryptocurrencies, through cryptocurrencies. Stable coins provide an excellent way to take shelter from a corrective storm. I’m only interested in projects leveraging blockchain technology to create completely new business models and disrupting existing ones, but these cryptos are very interesting nonetheless.

Investing in the cryptocurrency market is exhilarating, but it is also important to make sure your cryptocurrency is secure; there are too many stories of cryptocurrency funds being stolen because of lax security. Hardware wallets are the best way to protect your cryptocurrency, and this article provides more information on hardware wallets and how you can get secured.

Bitcoin hit its 2018 low early on Feb. 6, the morning of a key Senate cryptocurrency hearing, briefly undercutting $6,000. The chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission both urged stronger oversight. But the financial regulators stopped short of sounding an alarm. Nor did they call for any legislation to rein in cryptocurrencies. In the weeks after that hearing, Bitcoin rebounded to around $11,000 but it has retreated yet again to below $7,000.

Litecoin (10%) – Litecoin is often marketed as being the silver to Bitcoin’s gold status. Being a hard fork of Bitcoin, Litecoin shares many similarities to the original coin; Litecoin can also be used as a value exchange coin. However, Litecoin’s block generation time of 2.5 minutes, compared to Bitcoin’s 10 minutes, and different hashing algorithm (Scrypt), are features designed to produce a more innovative blockchain and cryptocurrency.
This portfolio gives us diversified exposure to more exotic cryptocurrency projects with higher risk / reward profiles, whilst holding the majority of our funds in a core large cap position. In a down market, we would expect this portfolio to perform worse than our conservative one. However, we expect a superior performance if the cryptocurrency market goes on a bull run.
Price history: this is relevant if I have made the decision that I want to invest. If it is an established asset I will be looking at its long-term price history, does it move in cycles (see Siacoin as an example), if so, which cycle is it in right now or does it have stable growth (see DASH)? If growth is stable I am less sensitive to the current price as I believe in long-term growth, I will only avoid if it is in a spike and will wait for the price to settle. If it moves in a cycle, unless it is early in a cycle, I will wait until the end of the current cycle before investing.

At the same time, it’s entirely unclear how governments will respond to bitcoin as it continues to grow, and if they’ll attempt to crack down in a very strong way and prohibit the use of bitcoin, or the creation of bitcoin related service companies, such as exchanges. If exchanges were banned from operating, for instance, it could very well make it very difficult for most people to transact between fiat currencies and bitcoin, and render the latter far less useful than it otherwise might be.

Most altcoins will reach a specific peak during a trading cycle, and the goal is to exit as close to the top as possible, the difficulty is identifying the top. I monitor these positions regularly and try and determine momentum. Depending on the coin and speed of growth, I will look to remove my original BTC investment as quickly as possible, for example, with 3–4x I will take out the initial investment, maintaining my original BTC position but, essentially freerolling the rest. From this point, each 100% move will lead to a 25% reduction in position until I feel that a coin has reached a peak, at which point I will exit the entire trade.
Welcome to the new year. You may have noticed Bitcoin’s extraordinary take-off last year, during which a majority of cryptocurrencies experienced huge gains. What does 2018 have in store for Bitcoin and all of the other cryptocurrencies? You’re soon to learn why things might not happen as you would expect. Let’s dive into the year of the AltCoins and see how a lot of coins other than Bitcoin will take the spotlight.
Cboe capitalized on their partnership with Gemini, a cryptocurrency exchange ran by the Winklevoss brothers, and used their experience with tracking crypto assets’ prices to create a tool called Cboe Gemini Bitcoin Futures Index. CME Group created its own price tracking instruments, CME CF Bitcoin Reference Rate and CME CF Bitcoin Real Time Index, in cooperation with a UK-based firm Crypto Facilities, which has a vast experience with cryptocurrency derivatives.